Elif Batuman Quotes

Common experience is the gold reserve which confers an exchange value on the currency which words are; without this reserve of shared experiences, all our pronouncements are checks drawn on insufficient funds.

I think that human beings are often looking for a reason to relate.

When a novelist manages to describe or evoke something you thought or felt, without realizing that other people also found themselves in the same situation and had the same feelings, it creates that same solidarity. Maybe it's better to think of humor not as a tool to express the solidarity, but a kind of by-product. Maybe the realization "I'm not on my own on this one" is always, or often, funny.

I think we're always looking for an excuse to connect.

I know the feeling of being with a person with whom I have nothing in common, and yet there they are, and there we are, together, sharing pieces of our lives.

Life is lived in common, but not in community.

I think, really, that the only way a person can open their heart to someone who is so much another is really by knowing them... whether that's in a classroom, or a soccer team, or a food pantry, or any of those things. I mean, we're kind of more alike than we are different.

Soldiers and peasants lived together on friendly terms; they knew each other and their everyday routines, and trusted each other; they shook their heads together over the war.

I am a human being; nothing human can be alien to me.

I try to communicate in a way that allows people in on what's going on. What's better than references to popular culture?

Things that bind a community together are the things that nobody has to talk about because everyone agrees about them.

People could empathize with other people who had gone through the same experience as they had.

No experience exists unless it's a shared one.

It's nice to feel like you have more in common with people rather than more differences.

I don't know if it's changing already with 'Joanne,' but my intention is to bring people together that don't know each other and that would maybe feel awkward, but somehow be brought together by the music. That's what I wanted to do. Because that is pure and authentic to my family history and what I stand for.

I love it when women are like, 'You guys sound like me and my best friend!'

TV can be a thread between all of us, and it can be a powerful tool to examine life and love and what we all have in common as humans.

People who get together, regardless of other structures, will find something in common. They are bound to. That was the Pete Seeger let's-all-sing theory.

Family is just the people you care about. We can bond with people that we have nothing in common with, even if it's just for a moment.

People are so much more interested in making connections, and finding common ground, and sharing experiences than sometimes their governments are.

Whatever the reason is, I am happiest when connecting with the human experience. It lets me know that I'm not alone in this world.

I think humor is a really important way of creating solidarity - like, through humor you can make people realize that certain situations, where they thought they were alone, are actually shared by everyone.

We shared. Parents. Home. Pets. Celebrations. Catastrophes. Secrets. And the threads of our experience became so interwoven that we are linked. I can never be utterly lonely, knowing you share the planet.

It is somethingit can be everything-to have found a fellow bird with whom you can sit among the rafters while the drinking and boasting and reciting and fighting go on below.

People never know each other until they have eaten a certain amount of salt together.